2. Time – November 2014/Kislev 5775

DO NOT BE ALWAYS ON

How much time do I spend online? What can I do to make better use of my time on and offline to be a happier and more productive person? How can we do this together? Shmita exists in the grid of sacred time. This ancient construct can help us in the modern world to take time out, reflect on our time management, and commit to more grounded practices and choices in our everyday life.

This month’s conversation features selections from classical sources about Shmita and contemporary texts about digital wellbeing, highlighting Douglas Rushkoff’s Program or Be Programmed – a template for TEN COMMANDS to help us live better digital lives. The first command: Do Not Be Always On.

“The observance of Shabbat and Shmita calls upon us to cultivate the ability to just sit, to be with what is happening in this moment without pushing it away to get to the next thing. It calls for an expansion of spaciousness and a hallowing of time. It is extremely countercultural.”

“The human nervous system exists in the present tense. We live in a continuous “now,” and time is always passing for us. Digital technologies do not exist in time, at all. By marrying our time- based bodies and minds to technologies that are biased against time altogether, we end up divorcing ourselves from the rhythms, cycles, and continuity on which we depend for coherence.”Douglas Rushkoff, Program or be Programmed